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December 03, 2004

Don't look the other way

It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.
One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."
But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.
The first requirement here is that we look at what we are doing – and not blink, not use euphemisms. Despite the Red Cross' polite language, this is not "tantamount to torture." It's torture. It is not "detainee abuse." It's torture. If they were doing it to you, you would know it was torture. It must be hidden away, because it's happening in Cuba or elsewhere abroad.

Comments

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I've never found the "reciprocation" argument to be a very compelling one because there is absolutly no evidence in support of it when looking at the history of the treatment of US POW's over the last 60 years.

The idea that "if we don't torture them, they won't torture our guys" would only work if our enemies were willing to abide by it, and the overwhelming evidence is that they never were. It's quite scary that the last regime to treat US prisoners of war with a semblance of respect for the the rules of war was Nazi Germany. All the others from the North Koreans to the various groups in Iraq have fraglantly and openly mistreated US POWS and did so regardless of how the US treated their own POWS.

Now, there are good reasons to treat enemy POWs in a certain way, but expecting them to recipricate when they have openly vowed to torture your POWS is not one of them.

Josh Marshall had a recent comment about how the current US administration not only violates civil rights, it seems to take delight in flaunting its violations of civil rights, rubbing it in with pettifoggery about vocabulary and the meaning of "is." Torture is the most extreme example. Why do Bush and his gang hate America?